Our Firefox costume can look a little lost and headless in between parties. But I am sure it’ll be back on track for the Firefox 4 festivities!

This is what it looks like when we release software at Mozilla. Except for when it doesn’t. This was actually a fairly unusual day, when (most) developers, IT, product, and QA all found themselves in a conference room in Mountain View. Usually, this is much more virtual, with the “room” being an IRC channel or perhaps a conference call, all of which spanning multiple time zones.

Because releasing software alone wasn’t challenge enough

Today I took a self portrait at the office. Just so my dear readers know what I look like when I do Project 365. The attentive ones among you might recognize the sketch in the background from day 35.

The “mirror”, by the way, is a regular window, whose sun protection coating becomes really reflective when it’s light dark outside.

This is one of my favorite coffee mugs: I bought it back in 2002 at the LinuxTag open source conference in Karlsruhe, Germany. The motto of that year’s conference — “Open Your Mind, Open Your Heart, Open Your Source” — hints at what this conference was still very much about: Convincing decision makers, in particular in government organizations, to recognize the potential in open source software and treat it as an opportunity rather than a threat. Luckily, we’ve come a long way since then.

This is a simple, Saturday-morning sun, “portrait” photo, with no alterations whatsoever.

There’s an excellent xkcd web comic about slacking off while compiling code, but of course, I don’t usually compile code, because I code in Python.

In the wake of a little server outage here at Mozilla, here’s my version of the comic:

(Based on the above xkcd web comic. Licensed under a CC by-nc license.)

“Cantina night” is Mozilla’s weekly week-end get-together for employees (and friends) to hang out, chat, and also play video games.

Cell phones make it hard to take photos when the lighting is a little bad, but I actually like the way the kid is burry because he’s moving while playing.

This real-life version of a well-known Internet meme was one of the Christmas tree toppers at the Mozilla offices this past Christmas. (Anyone know who made it?). When the trees were removed, brave souls saved the toppers from what seemed to be their sealed fate and put them up on display in different spots in the office.

This is a highest-quality cellphone pic taken with Vignette, with the “toy camera” filter applied. I like the graininess and dark corners that came out as a result.

As some of you may know, lately, I’ve become more interested into photography again. I’ve been taking pictures on and off, especially when traveling, and of special events. But I haven’t been actively working on improving my technique for a while.

Enter JP and morgamic, whose excellent pictures (and perhaps some lens envy) kept inspiring me to get out my camera over and over again. Just recently, I also started filling the gaps in my lens collection: I now have the ability to take pictures anywhere between 14 and 200mm focal length (before the crop factor), dramatically widening the range of pictures I can take.

So what better than a little photo project to keep the ball going? I came across Project 365, whose premise is simple: For a full year, take a picture every day and share it with your audience. All right, I’m in!

All other rules you get to pick yourself, with some people also suggesting to create some “anti-rules” as to be realistic and keep it a fun and achievable project, so here we go:

• I’m going to do my best to take a photo a day, and upload (and blog) it somewhat close to the time I am taking it.
• If I take a bad photo, I won’t beat myself up about it.
• This includes cell phone pictures. In fact, limitations of the equipment are probably what makes this even more fun to do.
• If I really didn’t take a picture one day, I’ll fill in one from my archive. Or improvise. We’ll see!

My personal goals are to increase my knowledge of photography and my ability to take good pictures — not only with expensive equipment. So I’ll try to flip settings on and off, apply filters, get closer, move further away, crop, or distort my pictures, hoping to find new and exciting ways to display reality.

Feel free to follow me on my journey, and don’t be shy to comment, both positive and negative, on the photos I take.

Oh, and if you are a photographer yourself, feel free to join in on the fun! Any questions?